A Death in the Family
by dislocation
Summary: One-shot. A short, slightly more detailed look into Hank Foxx's past by conjuring up a sister. Expands onto what we have been shown in episode 9 ('Head') of American Horror Story: Coven, and attempts to give Hank's initiation into witch hunting a little more substance because clearly, he's not all up there.


**A/N: Warning: some graphic violence…? I don't know, not sure what one would describe as 'graphic'. But I thought I should put the warning up anyways.**

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**A Death in the Family**

"_The hunt isn't only about the kill. A good hunter stalks his prey with care and only strikes when the time is right."_

It was more than a statement. More than an insult to remind him once again that he wasn't a foot soldier. Hank Foxx knew who his father was talking about. Amongst the other hunters, he was referring to _her._

Her name was Winona Foxx, and she was called 'Willie' by anyone other than her father who wanted a broken wrist. She was a daughter, a sister, with hopes to maybe one day become a mother.

She was a hunter, and a rather good one at that, despite being a woman and thus in the extreme minority in the world of witch hunters.

Being a female hunter was usually met with as much disdain and doubt as it was with surprise, but at the end of the day it always proved to be an advantage. Witches knew about hunters of course, that's why they weren't exposing themselves at every corner they turned. They also knew that the majority of them were men, almost as if to oppose the very fact the majority of the witches were women. Be it a power play or sexism it didn't matter, those simply were the facts. Winona used it to her advantage, always fighting to contain a smug grin at the pure look of surprise in a witch's or a warlock's face – and they were always surprised if you played your role convincingly – when they found themselves facing the wrong end of a gun.

Winona was independent and confident, just as good with a book in her hand as she was with her eye squinting trough the rifle scope. She was hunting on her own before Hank had started middle school.

When she walked in through doors of an old shop in a small mountain town, smelling of incense, she would know exactly what to buy. Which detergent was the most effective to wash out the blood, which herbs were believed to protect from witches and which was her father's favourite whiskey, even which jewellery was the purest to melt down and use on bullets. The store clerk would spy the shot gun the girl hadn't bothered to remove from around her shoulders and would wish her a happy hunting season. Winona would grin, her eyes amused. "Oh I will."

With her little brother she shared blue eyes and brown hair and three warm hugs a day: one when he had woken up, the second when she dropped him off at school and the third before he went to bed. And many more in between.

However, being a woman was not the only thing that made her different from all the other hunters. Unlike the rest, including Hank's father, she was very aware of a life outside hunting. One time she had confessed to him that if she wasn't a hunter, although she rather enjoyed the thrills of her employment, she would have been a teacher.

Hank thought his sister would have made an excellent teacher.

He always listened to her, eager to drink up her words of encouragement ever since he was introduced to witch hunting as he was never keen on it from the moment he had first heard the term. Winona and their father often argued over the fact that she endorsed Hank's talks of not wanting to be a hunter, buying him toy cars when he asked for them instead of showing him how to clean a gun – it was a long time before Hank caught onto their disagreements.

When it came to her, Hank's father wasn't as strict as he was with Hank. He wanted her following in his footsteps, of course, but physically she was a woman and although he never spoke down to her due to her gender he made it clear that if she wanted to move on, he wouldn't have protested. After all, he would have rather she brought a grandchild into the family than die, which was the more likely outcome when one leads a life as a hunter.

On his eleventh birthday, swaggering to the kitchen to get a glass of water with an overdose of sugar hovering above his head, Hank overheard his sister and his father exchanging a heated argument around the kitchen table, a fellow hunter trying in vain to stop their voices from rising. Nobody else heard it, or simply chose to ignore it, the happy atmosphere of the cake-eating guests remaining untarnished.

Their father was mad that Winona – he always called her by her full name when he was angry – had bought Hank a water gun, the one the kid wanted ever since he saw it on a commercial on the television months ago, instead of a real gun that fires bullets. Willie couldn't understand why their father didn't let Hank choose what he wanted to do. He wasn't born with the words 'witch hunter' branded into his forehead, was he? It was an on-going argument between the two with neither side ready to drop the subject. In the end, Hank kept his father from breaking the toy into pieces by promising that he was always going to keep it loaded with holy water.

They reconciled soon after. The father and daughter couldn't stay mad, truly mad, at each other for long. And even sooner after that, she was taken away from them.

It was a cold night and Hank was awake, having woken in the middle of the night from a nightmare. He had dreamt that Winona and his father were in another argument, Winona screaming that she hated him and leaving with a suitcase trailing after her. The young boy was resting on the window sill, drawing a pattern in the condensation that covered the glass. His design was crossed out by a long gash when he was startled by his sister barging into the room.

He raised an eyebrow, observing that over her pyjamas she was wearing her khaki coat and her mud stained boots. Any amusement dropped when he noticed the sawed-off shotgun in her arm. "What's going on?"

She lunged at him, wrapping her arm around his wrist and dragging him out of the room. "Don't talk," she commanded, her voice a curt whisper, the tone he had never heard her use before. "We have to get in the car and leave."

"What? Why?" She didn't answer, already running towards the front door, picking up Hank by his legs when he wasn't moving fast enough and the boy wrapped his arms around her shoulders. They heard a high pitched screech from the outside as if something was trying to get through the walls. Winona didn't stop moving, simply pointing towards the direction of the sound and shooting one round without looking. Hank winced, worry and panic beginning to set in.

When they reached the hallway Winona put him down only to thrust his coat and a pair of shoes towards him, along with a shotgun they kept hidden under the shoebox. Hank staggered under the weight and they were moving again, running out through the front door and towards the car, the boy tripping over his own feet.

They heard a yell of a familiar hunter and the sound of a gunshot, Hank jumping and clutching his things closer to his chest. Winona fished out the car keys to their truck from her coat and unlocked it, hurrying Hank inside.

"Where's dad?" he asked, as he climbed into the front seat. Winona threw the car keys at him and told him to close the window and wait with the keys ready. "Willie, where's dad?"

"He's fighting!" she barked, making him jump. Looking down at her gun she cursed, digging into her pockets and pulling out more bullets and prepping the weapon within seconds. "Don't leave the car under any circumstances," she gritted out through clenched teeth.

Frightened at her raised voice Hank did as was told before and rolled the window closed, pressing his face against it. He yelled his next words but they barely reached her, contained within the vehicle. "Fighting what?"

He would find out soon enough.

His father was fighting a witch. Well, all three adults were, they just didn't know where she was because she perfectly concealed within the shadows. He would later learn that it wasn't a particularly powerful witch, but she was strong enough to cause trouble. And what made her stronger was that she was on a revenge mission. The hunters didn't know whether they had killed her sister or her friend or her lover and they didn't particularly care, but the witch was angry and thus less predictable, less concerned about using her powers and exposing herself in the process, and this made her more dangerous.

Winona heard her father's voice call towards her and she yelled back into the woods surrounding their house, directing him to the source of her voice so he could find them. She heard a shriek and looked up, cursing, immediately pointing the barrel of the gun at the woman a few dozen of metres away.

Before she could pull the trigger the witch breathed a burst of fire towards her, Winona rolling out of the way just in time. Hank screamed and called her name out in worry. She pointed her gun at the witch again, only to be thrown back a couple of steps, luckily catching her balance before she could topple over.

Finally she pulled the trigger only for her eyes to widen in horror when the witch moved her hand and the bullet flew to hit the tree behind her.

Winona cursed, her hand hesitating. That's what she hated the most about witches. One 'gift' was never enough for them, was it?

She straightened her arm and shot again, her eyes squinting as she waited for the force of the recoil. But it never came. She cursed and tried again but no shot was fired. Before she could rationalise that it was lodged in the barrel she was thrown to the ground, yelling out in surprise and then in pain when the witch with black eyes plunged her long nailed hand into her stomach, twisting it around and pulling out a long, stringy mess of red. Winona convulsed, choking on her own blood as it pooled out of her mouth and the witch leaned over her with a snarl, slashing at her clothes and any exposed skin she could find.

Hank screamed and pounded against the window, his eyes wide and his face pale with horror. He choked back a sob, his hands flying to his mouth. He wanted to be sick but he couldn't bring himself to look away. Slowly, one of his hands shakily grasped the black switch and pushed it down, locking the door.

The witch looked up at the sound, her eyes dark and boring into Hank's own. She grinned, blood around her mouth and cackled, a look of neurotic and crazed strength on her face. She pointed a finger at him but before she could jump towards him a shot rang through the air and her mouth dropped open, her eyes unfocused. Hank screamed again when the blood sprayed over the car, momentarily jumping backwards into the driver's seat as the witch dropped dead.

Their father ran towards them, kicking the witch away and dropping the smoking gun. He rushed towards his daughter, asking Hank with a yell whether he was okay while pressing his hands to his daughter's bleeding stomach.

"It's okay, honey", he told her as she gasped, her eyes staring at the stars above them. "You'll be okay, we'll patch you up."

Another hunter emerged from the forest and cursed immediately after he saw the scene. Hank, taking in a deep breath, unlocked the door and jumped out, his worry for his sister directing his actions. Tears breamed in the corners of his eyes and he took in heavy breaths to keep them from falling. But when he fully saw the extent of Winona's injuries they spilled out and he fell to his knees calling her name and pressing his hands to a gash on her arm. The other hunter dragged the witch a couple of steps away, mumbling something about calling the ambulance.

"No, it's no use," Hank looked up at his father's words. The hunter shook his head. "It's too late, she's gone." He gave his son a pained look and Hank half expected his father to lecture him about crying but the man simply removed his blooded hands from Winona's stomach and walked away towards the other hunter, telling him to get an axe to chop the witch to bits before they could burn her. It wasn't a requirement to dismember the prey, but he could use a way to let out the anger he felt in his bones. Without another glance at his son he walked over to the witch and picking up the gun emptied the rest of what was in it into her chest, simply because he could.

Hank bit his lips and looked down at his sister's still form, her face still frozen in an expression of horror. He sobbed, his vision blurry, burying his head in her neck, his hands still clutching Winona's wounds, his clothes soaked in his sister's blood.

They buried her at the first ray of sunlight.

Usually they would have waited a few days, cleaned her up and rounded as many hunters as could come to give her a hunter's funeral. But neither Hank nor his father could stand the sight of her wounds, and even after the latter has closed her eyes, it still felt like she was staring at them.

A week later his father took him out of school to take him camping and Hank spend the entire night shooting the crosses that his father marked in the trees. The man was displeased by lack of dedication his son showed.

Hank didn't swear revenge into the sky as his sister's body was lowered into the ground. He didn't swear an oath to hunt down and kill every remaining witch left in the world. He was a _child._

_He wanted out._

He didn't want to die and he didn't want to see anyone else he loved die in front of him again.

But his father was insistent, shooting down any attempt to get out.

"Don't you want revenge on your sister?" he would say in Hank's ear as the boy pointed the shot gun at the target in their back yard. "What would Willie do? Would she shy away from the gun? No, she would fight."

Hank's father didn't say those words to be cruel and his grip on his son's shoulder was never more than encouraging. He wanted to protect his child, to raise him as a good hunter so that he wouldn't lose him, especially to how he lost his daughter.

But apparently stubbornness ran in the family. And as intent as his father was to make him a hunter, Hank was just as set on defying him.

When he was sixteen Hank, in the middle of his rebellious phase, took it a step further and packing a light bag ran away from home. He was tired of spending all of his time outside of school hours with men, the youngest of which were at least twice his age. He was sick of hunting too, sick that every time he killed a witch he could hear his father's words in his ear.

_"Nice shot, Hank. Good boy."_

Hank decided he would find a job in a different state and maybe finish school, picking a college on the other side of the country. Leave.

His father tracked him down to the motel he was staying at and trampled his plans by giving him a gun that used to belong to his sister.

"_I just – she would have wanted you to have this, son."_

Hank's father knew exactly what he was doing by bringing his daughter up to his son. He saw the pain that it brought, to them both, but it wasn't the first and it wasn't the last time he used her death to blackmail Hank into doing as he said. He felt no guilt because after all he was doing it for the good of his family.

Of course when Hank continued to stand up to him, his father was beginning to get increasingly annoyed with his son, especially when bringing up his sister's death didn't seem to work after a while. It was infuriating. Winona's death worked even on other hunters, for God's sake, why not her own brother? It was embarrassing. It was a betrayal. It came hardly as a surprise to both the father and the son when they began to drift away.

Hank always loved his sister, but he knew what his father only suspected that as good of a hunter as she was, she wasn't always happy. Well, she was proud of being a good hunter, she just sometimes wished she hadn't had to kill the prey that she did and she sensed greatly that Hank didn't want to hunt, often telling him, pleading him to:

_"Follow your heart. Not our father."_

It was hypocritical. She followed their father, didn't she? Her little brother was the only subject on which she didn't agree with him. In every other way, she was a good, little, 'Daddy's Girl'.

She even kept her hunting to herself, only boasting when confronted and handing detailed reports to her father of every witch that she killed. She didn't sit around the table with fellow hunters and celebrate with a shot of whiskey, or two, like the others after a hunt. Actually the opposite: she drank almost every day apart from the days she hunted. Hank was almost worried, knowing that it was wrong even as a child, but she was an adult and he realised he had little say in what she chooses to consume.

He told his father once, but the man would wave it off, telling him that her hunting was better than ever, and redirect his son's attention to a task of practising shooting, frowning when Hank wasn't as focused as he would have been if he was doing anything else.

"_Hey, there's nothing to be nervous about." A reassuring smile. He had said those words before. "Hank, you keep your hands steady just as we practised at the range."_

Hank's father wasn't at all surprised when his son failed to shoot the begging woman in front of him in Chattahoochee National Forest in 1991. He stepped in, his arm catching on fire and shot the witch, diminishing the flames. He brought his son to him by his collar. "No mercy! Never forget who they are!" he said, wishing he could engrave the words in his son's head, before wrapping his arms around him and cradling him to his chest.

Many hunters failed their first kill because in the end, it takes even more mental courage than it does physical. Hunters' parents might have felt a little disappointment of course but they knew better than to show it. It took three hunts before Winona Foxx finally shot a witch in the head, and she had burst into tears after.

When Hank killed his first witch, he wasn't Hank. He was Winona.

"_I was the same when I was your age. Worse even, I couldn't keep my breakfast down, ruined my shirt, and then nearly ruined everything. Your sister handled it in a little more… girly fashion."_

When he killed his second witch, he was also Winona. This continued until he stretched past the height of his father's shoulders, but the act of murder never grew on him. It was never normal. The gun in his hands never felt natural.

At times he found himself wishing that his sister wasn't that kind to him. He wished that she was like their father.

_"You are born a hunter, and you will die a hunter."_

He wished that she would have completely disregarded a life outside of hunting because the part that used to tell him he can do what he wants didn't die with her. It lived on in the back of his head where in that dark, tight corner he was still that small boy who was afraid of dying.

He knew that she wasn't like that because when he was fifteen, he secretly opened the cardboard box in the attic in which his father stashed away all her things and read her journal. By the end of his first year of high school he could recite the name of every witch she had killed and every thought and silence apology that followed the most.

"_Put her down!"_

Hank didn't listen to the memory of his father's voice when he first set his eyes on Cordelia Goode. He didn't have to. Because the overwhelming responsibility to kill the witch was drowned out by the memory of the time Winona told him that not all witches were evil. And the hunters weren't all good – and they were definitely not doing God's work unlike the many believed.

It was kill or be killed.

And she would have never forgiven him if he got killed.

But at the end of the day, she believed in his right to choose.

"_I'm a part of a sacred order, a soldier in a shadow war, a war that's been raging since before the time of Salem; we are a brotherhood pledged in blood, dedicated to stamping out the pestilence of witchery on the North American continent."_

Screw that.

A speech to appease his father, nothing more.

He was following his heart.

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**A/N: You guys have no idea how hard it was to resist writing "the family business" (**I'm having a lot of Supernatural feels, alright? I swear that flashback broke me**)**.** Anyway, I had this idea in my head since the speculations that Hank is a hunter were revealed to be right and after watching the most recent episode I decided to finally write it down.  
I wanted to neither glorify nor bash Hank or his father's (**what the hell is his name?**) characters, instead attempting to remain neutral so I hope I didn't mess up completely. On a more happier note, did anyone else burst out laughing when Hank encountered the dog in the house (and let's not pretend he wasn't overflowing with sass in this episode)?.. Anyways, tell me what you thought, and I hope you enjoyed it!**


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